IBL News | New York
SoftBank can soon surpass Microsoft as OpenAI’s top backer.
The Japanese multinational investment holding company is close to finalizing a $40 billion investment in OpenAI at a $300 billion post-money valuation, CNBC reported.
The VC company plans to syndicate $10 billion of the amount.
Part of the funding is expected to be used on OpenAI’s commitment to Stargate, the joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle, announced by President Donald Trump in January.
The generative AI market is predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman [in the picture above] contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, attended the event alongside other tech CEOs, and has publicly signaled his admiration for the president.
OpenAI’s new funding comes after Chinese rival DeepSeek’s breakthrough R1 model rolled out in the U.S., a powerful model trained at a fraction of the cost of American competitors.
Altman described DeepSeek’s R1 as “impressive” and wrote on X that “we will obviously deliver much better models, and also, it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor!”
